Local online talk show, Brother2BrotherTalk, hosted both students and their parents from the Roosevelt High School girls’ basketball team to address the allegations of antisemitism at a recent game.
On Jan. 4, Roosevelt High School hosted the Leffell School for a varsity girls’ basketball game. In the second half of the game, a player from the Leffell School reported that a RHS opponent said, “Free Palestine.” The coaches and referees convened and the RHS coach agreed to forfeit the game based on that claim.
The following day, a Leffell player published her account of this incident in her school newspaper. That account, along with unsourced social media claims, made their way into various news publications like the New York Post and The Yonkers Ledger. This exposure spurred politicians from Mayor Mike Spano all the way up to Governor Kathy Hochul to denounce the alleged actions of the teenage players. The Yonkers Public Schools district then suspended a player and fired their coach.
However, in the subsequent days, more investigation and interviews began to cast doubt on some details of the accusations. The fired coach, Bryan William, spoke to LoHud and News12 to assert he heard no such antisemitic remarks. A colleague of Coach Williams also submitted an open-letter in his defense. Moreover, an educator criticized the district for doling out punishment before an investigation made any findings. And then on Jan. 16, President of the Yonkers Branch of the NAACP, Frank Coleman, released his own findings that his interviews with RHS students and parents did not corroborate the allegations. It is his position that the students “are owed an apology for the rush to judgment.”
Now, the accused and punished players themselves have come forward to speak on what they believe happened.
Interview with Roosevelt High School Players
John Morrison and Tri State Jericko Morrison from Brother2Brother in Yonkers speak with the Roosevelt High School girls basketball team. This unedited interview aired on Feb. 29 and discusses the allegations of antisemitic remarks made during a January 2024 game against the Leffell School.
Interview with Roosevelt High School Parents
John Morrison and Tri State Jericko Morrison from Brother2Brother then spoke with the parents of Roosevelt High School girls basketball team. This unedited interview aired on March 7, 2024.
The Head of the Leffell School, Michael A. Kay, PhD, responded to the Jan. 16 conclusion from the Yonkers NAACP with his own letter published here. He rejects those findings saying, “Its conclusions are contradictory not only to our students’ accounts of their experience, but also to the findings of the Yonkers Public Schools‘ internal investigation into the matter, which determined definitively that antisemitic words and phrases were used at multiple points in the context of this game.”
Now, these Yonkers students and their parents have spoken publicly on their own behalf. So, in the absence of any official public report, the members of each community are left to only choose what they want to believe.
